China flexes its muscles in dispute with Vietnam | The Economic Times

“I find it quite alarming, because it was not so many years ago that there was a relatively tranquil relationship between China and its neighbors,” said Orville Schell, a China scholar who is the director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

“Now we have a picture that’s slowly pixelating, from Indonesia, to Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan, up the neighborhood,” Schell said in a telephone interview. “We begin to get a picture of stress and strain. This is not exactly the peaceful rise of China that we were advertised.”

While Schell said he did not necessarily foresee an armed conflict – a view echoed by others – he said the Chinese had “created a climate where it will be very hard for China to exist in this state of fraternal relations with its neighbors.”

via China flexes its muscles in dispute with Vietnam – The Economic Times.